SEE THE FULL SERIES:
Ex-Democrat lawmaker turns to Green Party
By COLLEEN O'DEA
GANNETT NEW JERSEY
Matt Ahearn made the unheard-of leap from freshman assemblyman to legislative party leader without a palace coup or a promise of favors.
THOMAS P. COSTELLO photo
Assemblyman Matt Ahearn was one of three Democratic Assembly members to defect this year when the party declined to support their re-election bids. Ahearn joined the Green Party; the other two became Republicans. |
The Bergen County lawmaker resigned from the party in power, the Democrats, and joined the Green Party. He is a party of one and, thus, its de-facto minority leader.
"I don't have staff briefings to tell me how to vote," said Ahearn, 44, of Fair Lawn. "I have to read the bills."
When the Democrats became unhappy with him, local officials offered him government contracts for legal work and a county job for his wife at the beginning of this year if he would step aside, said Ahearn, a lawyer.
"They didn't believe there was a legislator down there who was not trying to benefit from office," he said.
Then the Democrats torpedoed a bill that would end pay-to-play, the common practice of officials rewarding party supporters with no-bid government contracts, and Ahearn decided he wouldn't bow out quietly but would stay in office and switch to a party he believed in.
Ahearn was the first of three Democrats to defect this year when the party declined to support their re-election bids, leaving the Democrats with a slim 41-vote majority in the 80-member Assembly.
But Ahearn was the only one to switch to a third party; Arline Friscia of Middlesex County and Rafael Fraguela of Hudson County both became Republicans.
Of the three, Ahearn has been the most vocal in criticizing his former party.
He said both major parties are more interested in raising money and catering to the special interests that finance them than they are in doing what's best for New Jersey citizens.
He lost Democratic backing because he wasn't raising enough campaign cash and was making too many waves on such issues as campaign reform, Ahearn said. Democrats dispute many of his statements.
The Green Party that Ahearn joined is closer to his ideological beliefs -- supporting campaign finance reform and environmental issues -- but pundits and its own leaders say that having their first representative in Trenton is not likely to threaten the two-party system any time soon.
Some don't think Ahearn, one of just two Greens in state legislatures across the country, has a chance at re-election this November.
"He's a rich story from which the Greens will benefit," said David P. Rebovich, a political science professor and managing director of the Rider University Institute for New Jersey Politics. "He'll be in the debates, telling tall tales about the ne'er-do-wells in the Statehouse, but with so much at stake in control of the Assembly, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are going to let th at seat go to a third party."
Bergen County Democratic Party Chairman Joseph Ferriero said Ahearn doesn't have a chance in the election.
"Our polling shows what we know: He's a lousy assemblyman," Ferriero said. "We don't show him winning more than 2 or 3 percent of the vote, no better than any other Green."
Ferriero said Ahearn did not lose the party's backing because he was a poor fund-raiser. Ahearn wasn't doing a good job in office or on the campaign trail, Ferriero said.
"Whenever you have a split district, that's a battleground," he said. "He wasn't campaigning. I was getting complaints from mayors that he was not accessible. I got complaints from the leadership in Trenton. He was ineffective. He was not working with the leadership."
Ahearn tells a different story.
"The leadership of the Democratic Party did not like my outspokenness," he said. "Their complete focus is to maintain control of the Assembly and win control of the Senate. At the home level, I was not willing to be a player in the pay-to-play game."
Pay-to-play is a legal New Jersey tradition of public officials granting no-bid contracts to professionals and companies that supported them through the election.
According to Ahearn, who has suspended his law practice to be a full-time legislator, he was never supposed to win his Assembly seat.
In early 2001, Ahearn said, he had retired recently from the Fair Lawn Borough Council when the Democrats needed someone "just to stand for election" for the Assembly in the 40th District in Bergen County, where they had little chance of winning. Ahearn agreed.
Then the new legislative map was unveiled, and Fair Lawn had been moved into a much more competitive 38th District, also in Bergen County. Because he already had been campaigning, Ahearn was allowed to keep his name on the ballot.
In the general election, Ahearn spent $23,500 -- less than half that of his running mate, Kay Nest -- but finished second to win a seat. Nest lost.
Incumbent Republican Rose Marie Heck, who spent $182,000, was the top vote-getter, and although Republican Assemblyman Nick Felice, who had been redistricted from the 40th District to the 38th, spent nearly $95,000, he finished last in the four-way race for two seats.
For a time, Ahearn said, he was the "fair-haired boy" who was given sponsorship of key bills because he represents a district that could go either way in the next election.
As of mid-August, Gov. McGreevey had signed 11 bills of which Ahearn was a prime sponsor. Seven of those were signed after he switched parties, though all had been introduced while he was a Democrat. On two of those, Ahearn was one of more than 50 co-sponsors.
But in January of this year, Ahearn said he was making the rounds at municipal organization meetings in his district when people began to tell him they were sorry he wouldn't be getting the Democratic line on the ballot in 2003.
"It leaked out before anyone told me," he said.
Ahearn describes the machinations like this: "They wanted me to quietly step aside so they could appoint someone who would run as an incumbent, after I would do the heavy lifting on the budget. It started out with offers of legal work for my firm, then a county job for my wife."
He said he told them: ""I'll run as an independent, or I'll join the Green Party.' They thought I was using it as leverage and came back with more offers."
Ferriero said Ahearn's statements are "not a fair way to characterize" what happened.
"He was asked if there was another area of government service he might be interested in," Ferriero said. "He came back with his idea of a public position -- in the office of Homeland Security, which he is not really qualified for."
In the midst of this, both men issued a "joint statement" on Jan. 21. In it, Ferriero called Ahearn "a dedicated and hard-working public servant."
Ahearn said: "Neither Chairman Ferriero nor anyone else has asked me not to seek re-election. .".". Party leadership and my constituents are very pleased with my service as their assemblyman. I am now considering other public service options."
Three days later, he announced he was joining the Green Party.
What finally made up his mind, Ahearn said, is when the Democrats used parliamentary procedures to kill a vote on pay-to-play legislation just because they didn't want to lose access to the funds.
"I was done with the Democratic Party," he said.
Ferriero says Ahearn is a hypocrite for now blasting special-interest contributions that he accepted two years ago and for complaining about political patronage when his wife and daughter are on the state payroll, working in his legislative office.
State records show that through April of this year, Susan Ahearn, the assemblyman's wife, was paid about $6,000, and his daughter, Lauryn, about $2,000.
Ahearn says he hired them after losing Democrat-connected staff members who fled after he switched to the Green Party.
The New Jersey Greens are hoping Ahearn will help at least some of the 39 candidates they have fielded in the 40 legislative districts.
"We are ecstatic about Matt," said Jane Hunter, chairwoman of the Green Party of New Jersey and its Assembly candidate in Somerset County, "not only because he is a sitting assemblyman, but because he really is a Green. He is the best candidate."
Hunter is under no illusions that the party will become a bona-fide third party this year. The deck is stacked against any party other than the Republicans and Democrats, she said.
According to state election rules, in order to be recognized as a major party, that party's candidates must receive 10 percent of the total statewide ballots cast in a non-gubernatorial year.
Parties like the Green, which are not recognized, are at a disadvantage in several ways, Ahearn said. For instance, they cannot run in or raise money for a primary, and they can't set up county organizations to contribute large sums of money to candidates.
"We are building a political party from the ground up," said Hunter, who lost a bid for a Bound Brook Borough Council seat last year. "We're encouraging people to run for seats in town government, nonpartisan school elections. We're building a base of people who know how to run."
Ahearn's chances for re-election are uncertain. For one thing, life in the Assembly has become harder.
Since becoming a Green, he's introduced 10 bills, eight of which had no co-sponsor. None of these has gotten to a floor vote; most have not even had a hearing. That's not surprising, since several of them seek such radical changes as altering election laws to allow for instant runoffs, banning the sale of hand-held mobile telephones and imposing California emissions standards on cars in New Jers ey.
Ahearn still sits squarely in the middle of his former party members on the Assembly floor, but, to hear him tell it, both sides of the aisle court him regularly.
"I've gotten a lot of stuff done since I switched parties," he said. "I was the 41st (tie-breaking) vote on a bill that made not paying the minimum wage a crime. I was able to get funding for a study on child cancer using victims' baby teeth."
He also is likely to be outspent in the next few months.
As of July 15, he had raised $36,000 and spent all but $10,000 of his campaign funds.
The two Democrats who were set to oppose him had raised a combined $71,000 and had spent about $7,000 so far. It's unclear how much the Democrats are willing to spend -- one of those two opponents recently was replaced after potential conflict-of-interest charges were raised, and the party has set up a fund for the three Democrats in the district (two for Assembly, one for Senate).
Further complicating the race are the two Republican opponents.
The odds also are against Ahearn. The last independent to be elected to the Legislature was Anthony Imperiale of Newark, who served in the Assembly from 1972-74 and the Senate from 1974-78. He later returned to the Assembly for one term as a Republican in 1980.
Ahearn believes the Democrats will spend $400,000 against him. He conceded he won't be able to come close to matching that amount. He won't say how much he plans to raise but said, "I believe it will be enough to win."
And he is willing to take the risk.
"(Democrats) told me, "If you don't do what you have to do to get re-elected, you can't do all the good things you were elected to do,'"" he said. "I think you have to stand up and take the lumps and hope they still elect you."
